It’s hard to believe this wasn’t always the case. She was in fact a self-confessed dork in her schooldays. In an interview for her latest movie Young Adult, the 36-year-old described how she was a long way from the style icon we know today. She said, â€œI had these big round nerdy glasses that I can’t believe my mother sent me to school with, they seriously made every boy not look at me.”

In the interview Theron also reflects on not fitting in at school. â€œI wasn’t part of that group the popular girls were happy to have me in; I’ve just recently rediscovered the popular girl in my school, she’s living in some little dopey city now. I don’t know exactly all the details but I was thinking to myself; ‘I bet she has moments like MAVIS (her character in Young Adult), where she has a pang of nostalgia for her shiny days in school.”

Theron added,”‘So suck it popular girl who did not want me to sit next to you at your school bench and make me cry. Suck it!”

Theron grew up on her parents’ farm in a small town called Benoni, near Johannesburg. Theron and her mother suffered turbulent abuse at the hands of her father; he was an alcoholic who terrified them while drunk. Her father died on 21 June 1991 after he was shot by Theron’s mother, while Theron was away at boarding school. The shooting was declared self-defence and her mother faced no criminal charges.